I'm not someone who's into compiling lists. I don't think I could even consider myself "moderately" organized. I don't use a planner to write down “important” dates, it's all written down in the invisible etch-a-sketch in my head. Anyone who actually carries a physical day planner comes off ostentatious rather than organized anyways. It's like you can't even bother to remember the 4 things you need to do this week: buy the groceries, pick up a package at the office, go to a boring meeting at 9 AM, and possibly eat lunch with your “close” friend who you haven't seen in half a year. You have to whip out your planner to show that you have a life. So normally, I think of myself as someone who is often self-motivated, I can get myself to make flash cards for studying, practice playing the guitar, read an hour a day or so, but I can't organize thoughts into a list. Writing a list is like writing a eulogy for a next-door neighbor that you've never spoken a full sentence to. It's going to sound stupid when you read it back to yourself and it's not going to be useful to anybody.
Don't worry this isn't going to be a list of things I'm going to pack. I've tried writing that one for like 2 months and had failed a total of 5 times. Instead, this is a list of things I won't miss about Boston.
1. The winter. The terror is really made up of the frosty wind and the shitload of snow. Someone once said, Boston has 3 seasons: the season before Winter, Winter, and the season after Winter.
2. Traffic noises. I know mot people will say the honking of Massholes. But I swear I'm haunted by taxis with screeching brakes. It doesn't matter if I'm at a tourist location and there is a line of cabs or at the quiet suburbs and one happens to make a right turn at the intersection I'm standing at. The brakes will most definitely make the sound of 5 fingernails scratching a chalkboard.
3. Taking the subway. Common courtesy does not exist when you're at the subway station. A woman could be the best mother in the world, volunteer at a shelter, and even return the extra money a cashier accidentally gives her, but that same woman will stand in front of the door as you're trying to get off the train. And she will not move. Not if you were pulling your luggage or even if you walked with a shooter cane. She is determined to be the first to enter that door. And then there's the guy who has to tell everyone on the train he is getting off the next stop, so everyone must part like the Red Sea to make way for him to stand next to the door even if the train is in motion because it is absolutely detrimental to the rest of his day.
4. Dodging fatties. I'm referring to the people who like to take up space. They're going to take up all the space on the escalator by standing in the dead middle so that everyone behinds them stays behind them. Then there are the chain walkers who must walk with their group side by side almost linked to the hip so that anyone who wishes to get ahead of them on the street must take the risk of stepping off the sidewalk onto the street and dodging back to the sidewalk before a vehicle honks. Those people were born to stand in front of people who needed to actually go somewhere.
I feel like there should at least be 20 things on this list but I get bored when I try to write a list. I can't do it. I just can't.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Post #0
The Prelude to Japan with an Android, a Monk, and Dinosaurs
Lying under the shades of a persimmon tree, an idle monk spots an incongruous sight on the road. Marching on the path with perfectly calculated walk cycles was an exhausted android of modern design. Curious by nature, the monk calls out to it.
“Hey you!”
Detached from its surroundings, the android was resolved to journey west and continued walking without the slightest response. The persistent monk got up from his cool sanctuary and ran right up to the android.
“You look as out of place as an orange in an apple grove.”
The android could not avoid this pesky monk, to which he responded with, “They’re both fruits aren’t they?”
“Technically, yes. But they don’t belong together.” He shakes his head realizing he had made a bad comparison and then dashes up alongside his new robotic companion. He follows up with a more direct question, “Where are you from anyways?”
“Metropolis.”
“What brings you all the way here?”
Before the android could get a word in, the monk added, “Did someone transfer you here?”
“No, it was of my own choice.”
“A robot believed to have free will, I see.”
The android comes to an abrupt halt causing the monk to awkwardly side step in order to avoid a head-on collision.
“Does anyone really have free will?” The android asks his first question.
“Well I do. Humans do.”
“And so you chose to be here, to occupy these hills as a lonesome monk?”
“Of course, I could have chosen any occupation and lived anywhere that I wanted.” The monk briefly boasted of his family ancestry and the fortunes that they have left for him. “I could have been a salaryman in the financial district, or a big shot movie producer, or even a noble politician of my country.” Not wanting to be put down by this cheeky robot, he added, “but you, you were manufactured and you can only do what you were programmed to do.”
The android had walked millions of miles to be at the spot that he was now standing in. And in that time, he – no longer it – had developed the ability to think. Hoping to fully understand his own existence, he had to first understand the species that had built him. “If men were created equal, then perhaps free will could exist. But presidents, politicians, artists, vagrants, they all plague the streets of bright lights alike. They can only become the man they were born to become based on their innate abilities, natural surroundings, and the luck of prolonging their own death. You, monk, had more potential destinies than some, but they were only presented to you because you are a decedent of your family. Do the poor and unemployed not wish to work the jobs that you have once rejected? Or are they bounded by the weight of your society and the strings of your system just as we machines are subjected to your laws of social caste.”
“Hahaha. How dare you compare men to robots?”
“What’s the difference? They can both be categorized as robots; living in the constriction of the bodies that our minds may never separate from. We might not be equal, but we all have no choice but to live in the same reality.”
“You’re absolutely right, we are not equal. The human race is surely the supreme one.”
“If all humans thought like you, I would pray for them, for they will surely meet their demise as their predecessors did. Before humans there were dinosaurs, who thought they were the children of the creator, unmatched by any species. Roaming the planet, they ruled without respect for their brothers and sisters of Earth. Soon they became sluggish, and the combination of over-indulgence and ignorance caused them to be blinded from the fatal blow that wiped them out instantaneously.”
“That’s it?” I was now wide awake and sitting upright against my wall. I switched the phone from my left hand to my right hand and noticed the time on my alarm clock. It read: 8:21.
“Yeah, then I woke up.” He enunciated slowly.
“You woke me up at 8 in the fucking morning to tell me about a dream you had about a robot and the meaning of life?”
“Except I was the android in the dream. It just bugs me. I couldn’t fall back asleep, I kept contemplating.”
“I mean, I know what you’re talking about. We’ve all thought about the meaning of life and the possibility that free will doesn’t actually exist. And then there are the theories of the end of the world and the human race can be wiped out, just like that. It’s all the same bullshit that has no answers. You shouldn’t think too much about this stuff.”
“Of course, don’t you think I know that? But hear me out. It’s not like it’s the first time I thought about being enslaved by our society and having to break free. I mean I made that point loud and clear when I quit my job and started to do freelance.”
“Okay, so what is this all about? This time you might be a robot, next time a salamander, and then maybe you’ll be John Malkovich after that.”
“No, it’s not about being trapped that I’m worried about. You know how in my dream, I was the android. And in that dream, the android was intelligent, logical, and right about everything. The android was the hero. It was the monk who was foolish and didn’t see things as it was. But what if I’m the monk in real life?” He takes a beat. “That’s what bugs me.”
Lying under the shades of a persimmon tree, an idle monk spots an incongruous sight on the road. Marching on the path with perfectly calculated walk cycles was an exhausted android of modern design. Curious by nature, the monk calls out to it.
“Hey you!”
Detached from its surroundings, the android was resolved to journey west and continued walking without the slightest response. The persistent monk got up from his cool sanctuary and ran right up to the android.
“You look as out of place as an orange in an apple grove.”
The android could not avoid this pesky monk, to which he responded with, “They’re both fruits aren’t they?”
“Technically, yes. But they don’t belong together.” He shakes his head realizing he had made a bad comparison and then dashes up alongside his new robotic companion. He follows up with a more direct question, “Where are you from anyways?”
“Metropolis.”
“What brings you all the way here?”
Before the android could get a word in, the monk added, “Did someone transfer you here?”
“No, it was of my own choice.”
“A robot believed to have free will, I see.”
The android comes to an abrupt halt causing the monk to awkwardly side step in order to avoid a head-on collision.
“Does anyone really have free will?” The android asks his first question.
“Well I do. Humans do.”
“And so you chose to be here, to occupy these hills as a lonesome monk?”
“Of course, I could have chosen any occupation and lived anywhere that I wanted.” The monk briefly boasted of his family ancestry and the fortunes that they have left for him. “I could have been a salaryman in the financial district, or a big shot movie producer, or even a noble politician of my country.” Not wanting to be put down by this cheeky robot, he added, “but you, you were manufactured and you can only do what you were programmed to do.”
The android had walked millions of miles to be at the spot that he was now standing in. And in that time, he – no longer it – had developed the ability to think. Hoping to fully understand his own existence, he had to first understand the species that had built him. “If men were created equal, then perhaps free will could exist. But presidents, politicians, artists, vagrants, they all plague the streets of bright lights alike. They can only become the man they were born to become based on their innate abilities, natural surroundings, and the luck of prolonging their own death. You, monk, had more potential destinies than some, but they were only presented to you because you are a decedent of your family. Do the poor and unemployed not wish to work the jobs that you have once rejected? Or are they bounded by the weight of your society and the strings of your system just as we machines are subjected to your laws of social caste.”
“Hahaha. How dare you compare men to robots?”
“What’s the difference? They can both be categorized as robots; living in the constriction of the bodies that our minds may never separate from. We might not be equal, but we all have no choice but to live in the same reality.”
“You’re absolutely right, we are not equal. The human race is surely the supreme one.”
“If all humans thought like you, I would pray for them, for they will surely meet their demise as their predecessors did. Before humans there were dinosaurs, who thought they were the children of the creator, unmatched by any species. Roaming the planet, they ruled without respect for their brothers and sisters of Earth. Soon they became sluggish, and the combination of over-indulgence and ignorance caused them to be blinded from the fatal blow that wiped them out instantaneously.”
“That’s it?” I was now wide awake and sitting upright against my wall. I switched the phone from my left hand to my right hand and noticed the time on my alarm clock. It read: 8:21.
“Yeah, then I woke up.” He enunciated slowly.
“You woke me up at 8 in the fucking morning to tell me about a dream you had about a robot and the meaning of life?”
“Except I was the android in the dream. It just bugs me. I couldn’t fall back asleep, I kept contemplating.”
“I mean, I know what you’re talking about. We’ve all thought about the meaning of life and the possibility that free will doesn’t actually exist. And then there are the theories of the end of the world and the human race can be wiped out, just like that. It’s all the same bullshit that has no answers. You shouldn’t think too much about this stuff.”
“Of course, don’t you think I know that? But hear me out. It’s not like it’s the first time I thought about being enslaved by our society and having to break free. I mean I made that point loud and clear when I quit my job and started to do freelance.”
“Okay, so what is this all about? This time you might be a robot, next time a salamander, and then maybe you’ll be John Malkovich after that.”
“No, it’s not about being trapped that I’m worried about. You know how in my dream, I was the android. And in that dream, the android was intelligent, logical, and right about everything. The android was the hero. It was the monk who was foolish and didn’t see things as it was. But what if I’m the monk in real life?” He takes a beat. “That’s what bugs me.”
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